Messaging applications such as voicemail are widely used to collect messages directed to a user, when the user is unavailable for real-time communications. According to such systems, messages are typically replayed according to the order in which they were received. Oftentimes, a user can determine from header information, such as information identifying a calling party, that the user is not interested in listening to the message. In such a case, the user can immediately delete the message or skip over it to access the next message in the mailbox. For other messages, the user may listen to less than all of the message content. For example, a user may be able to determine from the first portion of a message that the remaining portion is not pertinent or not of interest to the user. Accordingly, once the user has heard a sufficient portion of the content to make that determination, the user can delete the message or skip over it to access the next message in the mailbox. The process of identifying and accessing messages that are of particular interest to the user can be time consuming and cumbersome, particularly when the user has a large number of messages in their mailbox.
In order to streamline the process for accessing messages in a user mailbox, systems have been developed that attempt to prioritize messages. For instance, messages can be grouped according to the calling party or defined groups of calling parties. For example, a user could create a group for messages from family members and a separate group for messages from work colleagues, by defining communication identification attributes that are associated with the different groups. Still other systems have allowed users to define priorities for different groups. Accordingly, a user can be presented with messages according to the user-defined priority for the group that the message is determined to be associated with. However, such systems require a significant amount of user administration.
Other systems have been proposed that are capable of automatically assigning a priority to messages based on the frequency with which messages from the caller are left for the user. Assigning a priority based on the frequency with which the user initiates calls to a calling party has also been discussed as a way for prioritizing received messages. Although such systems provide an automated means for prioritizing messages, they do not do so based on information regarding the treatment of messages from different callers by the user. Accordingly, such automated systems are limited in their ability to prioritize messages according to a user's level of interest in those messages.